Cutting and collating small playing cards and the like from large sheets of card material preprinted to provide an array of cards is a complex and exacting task. A variety of devices and methods have been used for such task.
The known methods for cutting preprinted sheets into cards have a number of problems and disadvantages.
With some prior devices, attempts to operate at high speed have resulted in severe compromises on the accuracy of card dimensions and/or on alignment of cuts to match preprinting. With others, high accuracy of finished card dimensions and accuracy in alignment with preprinting have slowed cutting and collating operations and drastically raised the cost of production. These problems are exacerbated when a very large number of rather small cards are to be cut from large sheets.
Some examples of prior art devices and methods include diecutting of cards from a sheet. Diecutting leaves a skeleton of card stock between the cards from which the cards must be stripped. Such stripping operations are often done by hand and are a time-consuming operation. Die-cutting of cards, while generally accurate, is not particularly efficient.
Another widely used prior art method involves repetitive cutting operations with collating steps carried out between cuts. For example, a stack of large sheets, each having a large number of cards preprinted thereon sometimes with no waste material between them, may first be cut into smaller pieces with a smaller number of cards thereon, for example, in so-called "four-up" cutting. Such four-up pieces are collated with other four-up pieces until a stack is formed which is then cut into four card-sized stacks. This sort of operation can be confusing on the production floor and tend to create bottlenecks in the operation because of the many movements and steps involved.
Yet another prior method involves bi-directional movements across a sheet to produce an array of cut cards. In such operations, slitters typically move in one direction to produce a number of rows of uncut cards, which are then passed over by another set of slitters or by repetitive slitter operations. The principal problem with such devices is their complexity and the collation problems which are presented after cross-slitting is completed. Hand collation is often required. Another problem relates to inaccuracy of such cutting operations.
None of the aforementioned cutting operations lends itself to high-speed and accurate cutting of cards and to subsequent automated collation. In summary, there is a need for improved methods and apparatus for high-speed and accurate cutting of cards from sheets of preprinted card stock.